Vernon fire sparks more suspicion

VERNON–The string of suspicious fires in Vernon keeps getting longer.

Just after midnight on Saturday, fire crews were called to the lot of the Rona, a home improvement store.

A stack of about 100 pallets was lit up.

Crews had some trouble getting to the blaze, because the pallets were inside a fenced compound, which was locked, and blocked by company vehicles.

Using two trucks, it took a dozen firefighters about an hour to contain the fire.

An employee of the store helped the crews by using a forklift to spread out the pallets.

The effort paid off, as the fire did not spread to the building, or nearby lumber pile.

“Obviously if a fire is suspicious in nature, it takes a lot of time and resources from other things that we could be doing,” says Capt. Dan Walker.